British journalists concerned by regulation, hostile climate

As Alan Rusbridger appears
Tuesday before the Home Affairs committee of the U.K. Parliament to give
evidence regarding the Guardian's
coverage of surveillance activities by the U.S. and U.K. governments, British
journalists and analysts say that newspaper's legal troubles are worrying in
large part because they come against the backdrop of increased regulation and
scrutiny of the wider industry.

Guardian Editor Rusbridger will be questioned under oath by members of Parliament
conducting a larger investigation on counter-terrorism. His presence was
requested by a former Conservative Defense Minister, Liam Fox, in order to
investigate the potential "damage" the Guardian
may have caused to British national security with its reporting on the
activities of the U.S. National Security Agency and its British counterpart,
the General Communications Headquarters.

Another member of
parliament, Julian Smith, was more specific in a letter to the Guardian's publishers in October. "We
have serious concerns that the GCHQ files and documentation that we understand
you duplicated and sent to both The New
York Times and foreign bloggers, contain information, which, if accessed by
terror groups or unfriendly or hostile foreign powers, could risk British
national security," the conservative parliamentarian wrote.

Its reporting on the
material leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has focused the
authorities' attention in the Guardian.
Prime Minister David Cameron suggested the London newspaper had damaged national
security and made an alarming threat--not carried out so far--of prior restraint. But
several British journalists and analysts contacted by CPJ expressed a wider
concern in light of the establishment of a new statutory press watchdog by royal charter on October 30.

"There is already a
chilling effect on journalism," said Charlie Beckett, a journalist and director
of Polis, the media think-tank at the London School of Economics (LSE). "Some
of this might be a good thing if it means papers hesitate before publishing
lies and extreme attacks on people. However, there are already real indications
that politicians and other people with power are using the prospect of tougher
regulation to pressurize newsrooms. The combination of a business crisis plus
Leveson means that people think newspapers are weaker--that's probably true--and
so they are pushing back," he told CPJ.

In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Rusbridger stressed this relationship between recent
examples of pressure on the Guardian--such
as the arrest under terrorism legislation of a courier for the paper, David Miranda, or the forced destruction of computer
hard-drives--with tighter press regulation following investigation of the News of the World hacking scandal by
judge Brian Leveson. "In the past five months a number of disturbing things
have happened.... All this has happened against a background of new press
regulation in which [British Prime Minister] David [Cameron] is claiming the
press has nothing to worry about from increased regulation involving his royal
charter. Some of this behavior is clearly designed to be intimidatory and/or
chilling," he told TheWashington Post.

The press watchdog,
whose establishment was agreed by British
political parties, will have power to impose large fines on U.K. publishers and
demand apologies from newspapers. Legislation was also passed to allow judges
to award exemplary damages against publishers that do not accept the new
regulatory system. But the newspaper industry rejects the government's watchdog
and has launched its own, the Independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso).
A standoff has ensued. "They have secured a royal seal, but failed to clinch a
deal," the Guardian said of political parties in an editorial. In
its own editorial after Queen Elizabeth adopted the royal charter, the
conservative newspaper The Times
described the government's regulator as "a recognition body that nobody
recognizes, a system of voluntary regulation without volunteer."

Most
analysts agree that the industry's version will become effective sooner or
later. "The newspapers' own
regulator will be the one to emerge strongest because it's the only one that
most newspapers will join. There is little appetite--or power--for politicians
to force them to join the parliamentary royal charter organization," the LSE's Beckett
told CPJ.

Meanwhile, several
beat reporters and journalists in British newsrooms said they see the battle as
a matter for publishers and editors. "I don't think people take it that
seriously, which may of course be a mistake--we take a free press completely
for granted, so we are not sensitive to threats," said Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
veteran economics editor for the Daily
Telegraph.

Given the animosity of
most national and regional newspapers toward the statutory watchdog, the
government has hinted to a future reconciliation between the official system
and the industry's self-regulator. But whatever the final framework, a malaise
has spread in the British press. "I am completely mystified by where things now
stand; I don't think the world is about to end, but am always suspicious of
politicians meddling with the press," Simon Jenkins, a Guardian columnist and former Times
and Evening Standard editor, told
CPJ. "I just hope it degenerates into a mess and nothing much gets done," he
said.

Some aspects of the regulatory framework
set up by the royal charter particularly concern an industry struggling with
the impact of the financial crisis and the digital revolution. The arbitration
mechanism, designed as a non-judicial conflict resolution tool, could lead to professional compensation lawyers, known as claim farmers,
"to seek big money from newspapers for breaches of the
industry's code of ethics," the Guardian
reported. More recently, a Labour party candidate urged union bosses to use new
press regulations to launch class action complaints against newspapers who
criticize them, after the Daily Mail
exposed alleged bullying tactics of Unite, a leading British trade union with close
links to the Labour Party, the Mail reported.

"I don't think the average British
journalist is terribly worried with politicians interfering directly with the
press; they think democracy is strong enough in this country," said David
Randall, a former editor for The
Independent. "But the atmosphere has changed after the royal charter was
adopted, and the real fear is the possibility that a mechanism that's plausible
and reasonable on the surface could be used by campaigners and activists in
harmful ways that no one intended," Randall told CPJ.

Borja Bergareche is a Spanish journalist based in London and a CPJ European correspondent.